Lyrics site LiveUniverse slammed with $6.6 million copyright judgment

Songwriters hope more lyric sites will seek license after gaining this first judgment.

Several years after music publishers began pursuing websites that published lyrics on the Web without permission, they may have their biggest payoff yet. A recent court judgment [PDF] against LiveUniverse makes it crystal clear: hosting an unauthorized lyrics site can get you in serious legal trouble.

LiveUniverse.com and its owner Brad Greenspan were slapped with a $6.6 million default judgment by a Los Angeles federal judge this week for running a lyrics site that didn't pay for a license from music publishers. That's $12,500 per song for the 528 songs whose lyrics he was accused of infringing.

Those songs include “China Girl” by David Bowie; “Moondance” by Van Morrison; “(Don’t Go Chasing) Waterfalls” performed by TLC; “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day; “Old Time Rock ‘n Roll” performed by Bob Seger; and “Georgia on My Mind” performed by Ray Charles.

The 528 songs were chosen as representative songs for the litigation from the catalogs of the music publisher plaintiffs: Peermusic, Bug Music, and Warner Chappell Music.

Greenspan went through a "revolving door" of attorneys, often failed to comply with the court's instructions, and sometimes failed to show up to depositions and key hearings, according to Ross Charap and Paul Fakler, the Arent Fox lawyers representing the music publishers who sued Greenspan.

"He engaged in serial misconduct, and refused to pay the court sanctions," said Fakler. "Towards the end he would show up, and have either a new lawyer, or no lawyer."

That's what ultimately led to the default judgment. The court docket shows Greenspan's last lawyer withdrew from the case in August 2011. The LiveUniverse.com site was taken down around the end of 2010, said Charap.

There are thousands of lyrics sites, and many of them remain unlicensed. Music publishers started pursuing these sites several years ago, and now, Charap said, they're starting to see some real revenue come from online businesses who have taken licenses. "This is an important new stream of revenue for publishers. They got nothing from it five or six years ago, and now they get tens of millions of dollars."

Charap hopes that a big judgment against LiveUniverse will ramp up efforts to complete the licensing, at least for US sites.

"The sites that are offshore say, 'I'm immune from suit, so I'm not going to bother taking a license,'" he said. "The intent here was to persuade all the sites based here [in the US] to take licenses, to try to persuade ISPs to tell their customers to be lawful, and to persuade advertisers not to be on these [unlicensed] sites."

Many more sites started taking licenses once lawsuits began to be filed, added Fakler. A typical license for a lyrics site involves paying 50 percent of revenue to music publishers and songwriters. This payment is based on the number of views particular songs get, so writers of hit songs will tend to earn the majority of that income.

It's unclear how quickly the plaintiffs will be able to collect their money, but Greenspan should be able pay. He was an investor in MySpace who still owned a significant chunk of the company when it was sold to News Corp. for $580 million in 2005.

While users who post lyrics on sites may feel like it's a harmless act, the sites themselves aren't harmless, said Charap. They're making serious advertising revenue, and ripping off songwriters and publishers. Unlike recording artists, songwriters only make money off licensing their songs to others.

"These sites are making hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars a year, on the backs of people who write this music and own this music," said Charap.

I am not sure how I feel about this - like most people my gut reaction is negative but on the other hand you could argue it is a bit like publishing any other work online without the appropriate license, e.g. books, poems, etc. But I also wonder to what extent fair use applies and where lines will get drawn. Will someone quoting some lines of their favourite song eventually be penalised as well? What about all those websites providing chords for music, or tabs for specific solos? It would add to the growing trend of crazy lawsuits we have seen.

I guess one question is: are lyrics typically copyrighted on their own, or is it just the entire composition that's copyrighted? If the former, than lyrics are no different than other copyrighted short-form written works, like poetry, which you can't just republish. But if the latter, then the lyrics themselves would just be a part of the overall work, and reproducing them can't be said to replace the original song itself, and thus should be fair use.

I am not sure how I feel about this - on the one hand you could argue it is a bit like publishing any other work online, e.g. books, poems, etc, without the appropriate license. But I also wonder to what extent fair use applies and where lines will get drawn. Will someone quoting some lines of their favourite song eventually be penalised as well? It would add to the growing trend of crazy lawsuits we have seen.

I don't agree with this court's decision, but fair use probably ends when you make lots of money off of it...

If they don't want "unofficial" lyric sites on the Internet, the record companies should post the "official" lyrics on their own sites so that fans actually have a place to FIND lyrics to our favorite songs.

I don't understand why listening and transcribing the lyrics is not protected fair use. As long as credit is given to the artist, it is just a quote. At worst it is a derivative work.

If they don't want "unofficial" lyric sites on the Internet, the record companies should post the "official" lyrics on their own sites so that fans actually have a place to FIND lyrics to our favorite songs.

This is actually a fair point. Most unofficial lyrics sites are havens for spammy popups ("CLICK HERE to send a <SONGNAME> ringtone to your phone!") and malware anyways, but they're really all we've got to go on as far as finding lyrics quickly online.

If they don't want "unofficial" lyric sites on the Internet, the record companies should post the "official" lyrics on their own sites so that fans actually have a place to FIND lyrics to our favorite songs.

I don't understand why listening and transcribing the lyrics is not protected fair use.

That is fair use; who said it wasn't?

Quote:

As long as credit is given to the artist, it is just a quote. At worst it is a derivative work.

No, it isn't a quote and it cannot be derivative unless it displays originality (ala parody).

If all a person can find is a line or two from a song from the site it would be legal (in the same way Google Book Search is).

If it is in fact a complete copy of the song without expressive/original work, it is in fact a copyright violation.

The lyrics are copyrighted, just like artwork, prose, poetry, code, and any other "recorded" work.

Google book-scanning is an example of "fair use" of copyrighted work, even though Google can make money off the service.

So in this case being able to "search" for lyric snippets (but not whole songs) would be analogously fair use.

Look at how wrong you are! If Google's book scanning is fair use as a transformative work because it adds easy indexing and searching via digitization, the exact same arguments apply here. See also: Authors Guild v. HathiTrust.

If they don't want "unofficial" lyric sites on the Internet, the record companies should post the "official" lyrics on their own sites so that fans actually have a place to FIND lyrics to our favorite songs.

This is actually a fair point. Most unofficial lyrics sites are havens for spammy popups ("CLICK HERE to send a <SONGNAME> ringtone to your phone!") and malware anyways, but they're really all we've got to go on as far as finding lyrics quickly online.

Agreed! I get a lot of music through the iTunes store and even though English is my native language, I can't for the life of me figure out what they're trying to say 95% of the time. Since we don't have an official place to look up what the words are supposed to be, we don't have much choice do we? Besides, it's not like most submissions on unofficial sites are ever checked for spelling, much less accuracy. >_>

Look at how wrong you are! If Google's book scanning is fair use as a transformative work because it adds easy indexing and searching via digitization, the exact same arguments apply here. See also: Authors Guild v. HathiTrust.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Google's book scanning ONLY for searching? i.e. You can search for things inside a book, and it'll show you those pages, but you can't actually read it from front to back. That's been my experience with it, anyway.

"These sites are making hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars a year, on the backs of people who write this music and own this music," said Charap.

I highly doubt any individual site is raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit by simply sharing lyrics. Also, the 50% of revenue going to publishers is bullshit. After giving up that kind of revenue, do they really think there is enough money leftover for the site operator to be profitable and stay in business?

I guess it won't be too much longer before we see the same thing happening to sites that share subtitles for movies/tv shows.

I'm confused. I have heard of songwriters, composers, musicians, and producers. But what is a music publisher? Sounds like a synonym for "Record Label subsidiary of [Sony, UMG, WMG]"

Music publishers collect money for songwriters.

Artists who perform songs frequently didn't write them and don't own them. An artist who wants to cover "China Girl," for example, must license the song from the publisher, which will pay whomever currently owns the rights to the song. The cover artists has rights to their performance of the song, but doesn't own the song itself.

I don't understand why listening and transcribing the lyrics is not protected fair use.

That is fair use; who said it wasn't?

Since there isn't usually an published "official" version of the lyrics that could be copied, any lyric site is just a transcription by users/fans...so if the publishing companies want to sue lyric sites, they obviously say it isn't fair use.

(Rhetorical) Why is it always RIAA and publishers that want to sue fans. I can't imagine that any actual musician (the people who WROTE the lyrics) actually want to shut these sites down. What musician doesn't want fans to sing along to their songs?

I'm a bit ambivalent about this. On one hand, if you're making money off it, you are getting value from other people's work without giving anything back (to the artists).

OTOH, it's a bit absurd that I can't post the words to a song, without infringing. Like SuperSpy said, who is going to go "Yay, now I don't have to buy the song, the words are right here".

Shouldn't the default reasoning be "If someone is looking up the lyrics to our song, they bought it/rented it", so the visitors are actually people who are already customers.In addition, I've found not a few songs by searching for snippets of lyrics I remembered from the radio or a party.

Once again, RIAA is shooting themselves in the foot out of sheer greed, I think.

So we are going to reignite the early century fight over the modern day equivalent to sheet music again? This time without the musical notation even being there?

RIchard Stallman is looking more and more a prophet with silliness like this.

Monoclefox and bflat have interesting points. Perhaps simple chords will be outlawed next.

And then thoughtcrime will be more fully realized and randomly enforced...

I figure the way to win against this kind of thing is to only support independent music, and I do. The RIAA says that almost half of musicians were lost? Not the way I've seen it. Those musicians were just driven down into the underground economy, where people like me support them.

The music is much better down here anyway, RIAA, so die the lingering death you've so richly been cultivating.

As long as credit is given to the artist, it is just a quote. At worst it is a derivative work.

No, it isn't a quote and it cannot be derivative unless it displays originality (ala parody).

No, derivative works are derivative by their very nature of being directly derived from another work, originality is merely required for them to get their own copyright as a new work. A photo of a painting is a derivative. A photo that has artistic merit in its expression may be copyrightable, one that squarely frames the painting for the purpose of reproduction for print is not.

If they don't want "unofficial" lyric sites on the Internet, the record companies should post the "official" lyrics on their own sites so that fans actually have a place to FIND lyrics to our favorite songs.

Seeing how it's still 1992, you drive to the store and purchase the album on CD or cassette, hoping the artist has chosen to include the lyrics in the insert. They're not going to make them available in a place where anyone can see them for free since there's no way to monetize that, or else there would already be hundreds of random websites filling the demand.

On a less sarcastic note, I actually do miss arguing with my friends for weeks about song lyrics. Try that now and someone just whips out a phone to settle it.

The lyrics are copyrighted, just like artwork, prose, poetry, code, and any other "recorded" work.

Google book-scanning is an example of "fair use" of copyrighted work, even though Google can make money off the service.

So in this case being able to "search" for lyric snippets (but not whole songs) would be analogously fair use.

You're right, but suing for this seems silly. I'm sure that the artists and studios object to the fact that many of the Lyrics sites usually sell ads to make money, therefore they have the means to pay for a license.

On there other hand, unlike a a book, I can hear the entirety of the lyrics free of charge on the radio, and the lyrics aren't the only element of a song (lyrics, music, the voice of the singer(s))... so listing the lyrics doesn't deprive the author of any sales (since they never sold the just the lyrics themselves). Whereas if you post the text of a book online, I don't need to purchase the book anymore, as the text is pretty-much everything.

Still that's the law... and they within their rights to take legal action.

As long as credit is given to the artist, it is just a quote. At worst it is a derivative work.

No, it isn't a quote and it cannot be derivative unless it displays originality (ala parody).

No, derivative works are derivative by their very nature of being directly derived from another work, originality is merely required for them to get their own copyright as a new work. A photo of a painting is a derivative. A photo that has artistic merit in its expression may be copyrightable, one that squarely frames the painting for the purpose of reproduction for print is not.

Okay, fine; it is illegally derivative unless it has enough originality to be transformative (ala parody).

Without any transformation it is merely a copy and therefore protected under standard copyright laws.

So, if I wrote the lyrics to a hit song, now I can expect a check in the mail because the publishers won this suit? Or is all this new money going to fall into the same RIAA black hole that consumed all the money from digital sales?

Isn't this more of a judgement of the defendant's behavior in court than the actual facts of the case? I mean, that's what a default judgement is, isn't it? I don't see how this is a case that could be cited with any credulity at any future cases.